Box Capture – Quick Review

One of the things announced this week at BoxWorks was Box Capture. Box Capture is a little iOS app that lets users upload pictures and videos from their phones and iPads directly to a specified folder in Box.

So what? I can already do that.

Yes, you can. However, there is a subtle difference between just loading photos and videos from your device’s storage into a Box folder via the Box iOS app and using Box Capture. That difference is that with Box Capture the photos and videos are never stored on the device itself. It’s a minor thing, but for certain use cases could prove to be very beneficial.

Any use case in which content security and privacy are important would benefit. If the device is lost or otherwise compromised, there’s no longer the risk of someone getting access to content they shouldn’t (assuming you don’t leave yourself logged in to Box via the main app). It’s also handy for those that have limited capacity on their devices.

From an ease-of-use perspective it’s as easy to use as you’d expect of anything from Box. If your use case requires removing the photo or video from your device, Box Capture saves you a step or two. It’s not a big deal for one off’s or occasional use, but if it’s something that you do a lot, it could turn out to be significant.

UPDATE: As I was on the first of my two flights home today, I thought about how cool it would be if the new app had some sort of offline capability wherein I could take a picture and it would plunk it into the selected folder once I was online again. So I took a couple of pics to see what would happen. Initially, nothing. Once I was back on the ground and had a reliable signal, well, to my delight those pics I took on the plane suddenly appeared where I had wanted them to. Pretty slick. Keep in mind that my phone was in airplane mode the entire time; I don’t know what the result would be if I’d turned my phone off (does anyone actually do that?).

UPDATE TOO: If you set review to “on” (see the image), Box Capture allows you to change the file name and add a comment before the picture or video is saved to the selected folder. It also presents a list of recently selected folders. And in keeping with keeping things slick and fast, the picture files are saved in .png format.